OBJECTIVE

Volkswagen, also referred to as the people's car, is the official mobility supplier of soccer, the people's sport in The Netherlands and Europe. To leverage on its (inter)national sponsorship activities aimed at gaining brand sympathy and to promote its Team Assist application (a planning tool for car sharing around away games), we wanted to get in the heart of the European Championship by hijacking the most discussed match in the Netherlands and Germany.

CAMPAIGN

As the most-loved car brand in both countries, Volkswagen Holland and Germany joined forces. In a campaign where both nations could settle the score before kick-off: DAS INTERLAND. A live penalty shoot-out, where Dutch and German fans wipe each other out, at the tip of a finger. A simple post on the Dutch and German Facebook walls got the ball rolling. A smart back-end insured there were always opponents to play against on any device whether they were available on smartphone, tablet and desktop. Players posted their victory on Facebook and Twitter, making sure friends joined the battle. Banners on Dutch and German football blogs revealed intermediate scores, making people even more fanatical...

CREATIVE RATIONALE

By joining forces between Volkswagen, The Netherlands and Germany, we were able to tap into a highly engaging national sentiment of two sworn football enemies and involve two national Volkswagen Facebook fan bases, that got the ball rolling nationwide. Beating real life opponents contributes to a feeling of a true battle, before the actual kickoff. By poking fun at the rivalry,Volkswagen brought two nations a tiny bit closer together. Something you just might expect from the people's car brand.

RESULT

The idea did start the rivalry before the actual kickoff. As close to 700.000 battles, with 7m penalties were fought in just 12 days. Players spend on average 15' beating opponents, including one true fanatic player who spent over 54 hours in the game. Over 1.5m people read and talked about the alternative interlard, putting Volkswagen in the heart of the European Championship.

To give the Dutch athletes the most fanatic supporters, we created a special edition Volkswagen up! with "orange-motion technology" that powers a car by noise. This special edition converted cheering sounds into motion, so the louder the cheering, the faster the car moved. Dutch fans tried to race the vehicle through their cheers on a 100-meter track, to win Olympics tickets.

The backstory of a 'sounddriven car' was enough to arouse initial curiosity. The seedingvideo was picked up on blogs. A television-commercial promoted a fortnight of daily competitions in the Netherlands: enthusiastic Dutch fans tried to race the vehicle through their cheers on a 100-meter track, to win Olympics tickets.

The idea of a sound-driven car was picked up: 45 national and 17 international magazines and e-zines wrote about the Olympic up!. The video contents of cheering supporters got watched over 500,000 times during the two weeks of activation. The total campaign raised model awareness of the up! from 37% to 51%. And we got a fourth position in the Olympic Barometer, right after the three big official Olympic Partners.